Are you going to come up with cites for numerous and very recent cases in which we know that innocent people were executed - yes or no?
So far all you have come up with is a case which isn’t numerous, isn’t recent, and in which by your own admission you have not been able to show innocence.
Regards,
Shodan
Twelve years ago, I said:
Lets put it this way. An employee of yours give you a 50 page document. He proof reads the first five pages and finds three typos which he corrects, then gives you the document claiming that it is error free. After all he didn’t see any errors that he didn’t correct. Do you believe him?
Are you going to come up with cites for numerous and very recent cases in which we know that innocent people were executed?
Regards,
Shodan
If only Troy Davis had his day in court to present all that evidence.
“Ultimately, while Mr. Davis’s new evidence casts some additional, minimal doubt on his conviction, it is largely smoke and mirrors. The vast majority of the evidence at trial remains intact, and the new evidence is largely not credible or lacking in probative value.”
and
“For the above stated reasons, this Court concludes that executing an innocent person would violate the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution. However, Mr. Davis is not innocent …”
I’m going to ask you - do you think that your question is a fair question: do you sincerely believe it is a good faith argument that the DP is OK?
I know you know, or at least I know you’ve been told numerous times on these boards, that once an execution is carried out, the state closes the case. You can’t get the evidence to test.
Further, there’s only DNA evidence in about 10% of capital cases. So while we know we have screwed up several hundred capital convictions and caught them in time (post conviction, pre-execution, obviously), there are 90% that don’t have any DNA to test.
Being perfectly honest, and not cagy, I say those two facts make me certain that the US has executed an innocent person sometime since 1976. How many? Obviously I don’t know. 1389 people have been executed since then. 139 people have been exonerated, mostly by DNA. ButDNA evidence doesn’t existin most cases.
It’s a similar argument to tobacco causing lung cancer. I could be coy and ask you to prove any particular person who died of lung cancer died because they smoked. And you could give me person after person who smoked and died of lung cancer, and I could dismiss every one. You never know with a particular person. And it’s true - the only way we know tobacco causes lung cancer is overwhelming statistical probability of the masses.
So, do you accept that a sufficiently large, post-conviction exoneration rate where DNA evidence exists, together with a sufficiently large number of convictions *without *DNA evidence, could theoretically demonstrate that the US justice system has executed innocent people? Let’s not even argue about numbers right now - do you accept that argument in general, if both sets are *sufficiently *large, we’ve been killing innocents?
I think the answer to that question could make this back-and-forth come to a close.
And, by they way, I beseech you (and everyone) to read False Justice, written by a pro-death-penalty Republican former Attorney General (state of Ohio).
Given the assertion that there are numerous and very recent cases in which we know that innocent people were executed, yes, it is a fair question.
Regards,
Shodan
And given the standards you are willing to accept, nobody is innocent because the courts rule “Not Guilty”, not “Innocent”. Congratulations, you win the thread. :rolleyes:
That and the multiple witnesses who heard him say “You’re not the one who was supposed to die” over his daughter’s casket.
As far as the deterrence aspect, the reason it is not a deterrence is that the ultimate punishment—death—is too far removed from the crime. I’d like to see the DP used much less often, only in instances of complete certainty, an super swiftly. These 20-plus waits on death row are unhelpful in the extreme. I also would take the DP off the table for any crime committed by a minor.
That’s not a confession. For all we know, he was saying “God should have taken me, not you”, or something like that.
Something many a grief-stricken parent has said over the casket of their child, because the child is supposed to outlive the parent. Grasp that straw any tighter and it might leave a permanent imprint on your palms.
I’d wager that 90% of parents grieving their child’s death say something to that effect.
You admit that there’s no evidence, and then say you disagree with me for saying there’s no evidence.
The “innocent man wrongly executed” is a phantom, a boogeyman, a mythical creature chased fruitlessly by anti-DP advocates, based on a belief that every person involved in the trial and appeals process, defendant, prosecutor, counsel, judges, jurors, witnesses, everyone involved is either massively incompetent or sociopathic and reckless with human life.
If an innocent person were to be executed, it would be a tragedy, and one that would demand answers, explanations, and changes to stop that mistake from happening again. But it would not invalidate the death penalty itself as a necessary tool of justice.
Point out this “admission”.
It would (and already has) in my mind. In my view, the death penalty adds nothing in terms of deterrence and overall justice that isn’t accomplished by life imprisonment, and carries with it the risk of an irreversible punishment for an innocent person.
I am anti-death-penalty.
But my goodness, the responses to Shodan are absurd.
The obvious answer is that the specific claim he’s responding to was wrong. It’s simply not true that there have been " numerous and very recent cases in which we know that innocent people were executed."
Admit that.
Then point out that this was an foolishly and inartfully presented claim.
The more compelling and defensible claim is: given the existence of cases that made it through trial and resulted in a death penalty sentence, and were later found to be flawed based on DNA evidence, it would be highly unlikely that other death penalty cases without DNA evidence were completely error-free.
Therefore, it’s virtually certain that we have executed SOME people that were actually innocent.
It’s highly likely that were more than one. As the number rises, it becomes less and less likely: it’s very likely we’ve executed two; somewhat likely we’ve executed 20; possible but unlikely we’ve executed 100 innocent people.
Shodan? Comments on the foregoing?
As I quoted previously (emphasis mine);
I don’t believe this. I essentially think that if people were really considering what they’re about to do and what the consequences could be for them, threatening them with a 10 year sentence would be enough of a deterrent for most crimes. Nobody wants to wreck his life and spend his next ten years in a jail. People are killing other people over 1 000. Any rational person, even a psychopath who doesn't care about killing, would realize that 1000 isn’t even worth 6 months of jail time. Any reasonable individual thinking “wait, I might get caught and spend the next year in jail” would forget about the killing and the $ 1000. If even the risk of a life sentence doesn’t deter them, adding a death penalty won’t, either.
A jail sentence doesn’t deter them not because it’s not harsh enough, but because they don’t think they’ll be caught, or more likely don’t think at all. You can threaten them with 20 years, with a life sentence, with death…it won’t change a thing because they’ll keep not thinking or at least not fearing the consequences. Only when they’ll actually get caught will they begin to worry about the sentence and be frightened by the death penalty. Not before the crime is being committed, when fear would actually serve a purpose.
Basically, I believe that in the overwhelming majority of cases, no sentence above some relatively low level is a deterrent. People are going to be deterred by 10 years or they aren’t going to be deterred at all.
You are aware that “absolute proof” and “evidence” are not the same thing, right?